Qualla: RAF Downham Market

RAF Downham Market: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of 2 May 1945, sixteen de Havilland Mosquitoes lifted off from a concrete strip in the Norfolk fens and flew northeast. They belonged to 608 Squadron, they were among the very last RAF aircraft to bomb Germany in the Second World War, and they came home to Downham Market. Three years later their airfield closed. By 2016 the last visible stub of runway alongside the A10 had been bulldozed. RAF Downham Market is now almost entirely gone, returned to the wheat and sugar beet that surrounded it, but for a few brief years it was one of the most lethal patches of ground in East Anglia.

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RAF Downham Market: Satellite of Marham

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Downham Market opened in the summer of 1942 as a satellite station for RAF Marham, a few miles to the north. Three concrete runways crossed the fen: one of 1,900 yards and two of 1,400. There were thirty-six hardstandings, six T2 hangars, and the usual Nissen-hut sprawl of accomm...

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RAF Downham Market: Stirlings and Lancasters

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first squadron in was 218 Squadron with their Short Stirlings, arriving from Marham in July 1942. 623 Squadron formed at Downham in August 1943, flew Stirlings for four months, and was disbanded when the station re-equipped with Lancasters. 214 Squadron passed through briefly...

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RAF Downham Market: The Cost

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Across the war years, 170 aircraft either failed to return to Downham Market or crashed on operations from it: 109 Stirlings, 40 Lancasters, 21 Mosquitoes. Mosquito KB364 came down on Bawdeswell church. Each number was a crew, usually seven men in a Lancaster, four or five in a S...

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RAF Downham Market: Erasure

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Closure came in 1946. The site sat derelict until it was finally sold in 1957. Around 1950 a large portion of the domestic site was redeveloped as a short-term housing estate called Stone Cross, which closed in 1963. The airfield remained almost intact until the late 1970s, when ...

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RAF Downham Market: What Remains

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the air over west Norfolk, the outline of Downham Market is still legible if you know where to look. The geometric pattern of the dispersals, the slight discoloration of the soil where concrete used to be, the regularity of certain hedgerows and field boundaries, all hint at...

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